Roy AL DIVISION MODEL 401empty of soldiers, but even those on duty were affected by the general corrup-
tion and subjected to exploitation by clerks of the Ministry of War or garrisons.
These clerks would falsify attendance certificates in advance to make it look
like the soldiers had been AWOL, and then use this to collect cloth payments
from them as a penalty. After the men did show up for service, they might take
bribes in return for assigning them lighter duty, or collect payments or fines on
the grounds the men were late for duty or had faulty equipment. Meanwhile,
they allowed their relatives and men from influential families to pay cloth taxes
for the purpose of hiring a substitute without ever finding a substitute to serve.
"Guard posts with a contingent of twenty men were left with only seven or eight,
and the soldiers who did serve on rotation were left with heavy burdens."I6
He condemned the practice of excusing duty soldiers from service and col-
lecting tax payments from them instead (panggun sup '0). He did not know just
when the practice had begun, but he was aware that the government had felt that
funds could be saved by sending duty soldiers back home to the farm during
peacetime rather than support them on tours of duty. The problem was that the
practice was excessive: not only was the Ministry of War guilty of rcleasing guard
soldiers and runners from service in return for tax payments, but the situation
in provincial gaITisons was even worse.
The practice had commercialized military service by converting it into a source
of revenue and income. The military officials had taken to discussing garrisons
in terms of their revenue income instead of their military capability. Thus, a fron-
tier garrison of a hundred men was referred to as "a 200 p'il-a-month-post" (since
the tax payment per soldier, in lieu of service, was 2 p 'il per person). In making
appointments personnel officers used this criterion in deciding whether to
reward or penalize officials. The spirits of the officers appointed to command
garrisons either rose or fell according to the prospective income of the post, and
their friends offered either congratulations or condolences based on the prospec-
tive income. Provincial military commanders and garrison commanders "treated
[the soldiers] as sources of income for the extravagant spending of their wives
and concubines or to raise funds to bribe influential people," while the officials
at the Ministry of War used the revenues to pay the costs of banquets and enter-
tainments for their friends and superiors. I 7
Peasants in the villages were happy to go into debt at usurious rates of inter-
est to obtain the funds for cloth taxes that would gain them relief from actual
duty. When they did serve at places like provincial military commanders' yamen
at great distance from their homes, they were required to transport all the heavy
goods that the commanding officer required as well as pay fees and bribes to
the yamen clerks. If soldiers chose to run away to evade service, their taxes were
distributed among their relatives and neighbors in the usual fashion. driving these
people out of their villages as well.
In their eagerness for collecting taxes, the officials were registering babes at
the breast for mil itary service and collecting cloth payments from their parents.